Braley: Senate decision may not come until summer

2/5/13 3:40 PM EST

Rep. Bruce Braley, who's widely expected to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Tom Harkin, said he may take a couple months before making an official announcement.

"If I’m doing it, I’ll do it definitely by the summer," the four-term Democrat told POLITICO today when asked about his interests in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Tom Harkin.

Braley said he's given "a lot of thought" to running in 2014, "but I’ve not made a formal decision yet.”

"It’s a very important decision," Braley said. "It’s been 40 years since there’s been an open seat Senate race in Iowa. That means there’s going to be a lot of attention devoted to this race, and it’s a great honor, and a great privilege and a great challenge to win in a statewide race. So those are the things I’m looking at and obviously talking to my family is the first and foremost thing. All of those things have been going on in a very short and compressed time period."

Asked if he had a timeline for making his decision, Braley replied, "I don’t have a timeline. It’s more driven by the realities of some of the challenges you have to deal with in getting a campaign launched. I expect that some decision will be made in the near future, but beyond that I just don’t know what the specific timeline’s going to be."

On the Republican side, Reps. Steve King and Tom Latham are considering running for the seat.